


Start With Why

by PrettyMissKitty



Series: the Old Guard - MISC. [2]
Category: The Old Guard (Comics), The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Character Study, Emotional Hurt, Everyone Needs A Hug, Everyone also needs therapy, Gen, Healing, Healthy Relationships, Hurt/Comfort, Introspection, M/M, Missing Scene, OT5, important questions get asked and answered
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-01
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-09 07:28:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 10,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27347395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrettyMissKitty/pseuds/PrettyMissKitty
Summary: The thing about betrayal is that it hurts. Sometimes it hurts too much to see the broader situation clearly. But after Booker's betrayal, the team has to look at themselves and see how every one of them is culpable. Booker may have done the deed, but his measly 200 years makes him a child to the others, especially Andy, and like babysitters are to blame when their charge sets the curtains on fire, the Family needs to ask themselves WHY and accept the honest answers. Why Copley, Why Merrick, and  Why something made Booker believe that his choice was the right one for his Family...
Relationships: Andromache of Scythia & Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani & Nicky | Nicolo di Genova & Nile Freeman, Andy | Andromache & Booker | Sebastien le Livre & Joe | Yusuf al-Kaysani & Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Booker | Sebastian le Livre & James Copley, Booker | Sebastien le Livre & Nile Freeman, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Series: the Old Guard - MISC. [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1907041
Comments: 43
Kudos: 91





	1. ANDY

**Author's Note:**

> There were just so many questions I had after the wrap at Prospect of Whitby, chief among them WHY. Mainly why Booker chose Copley, and why he trusted Copley's choice of Merrick... Not to mention what made Booker think it was truly for the best... Andy is WAY TOO OLD to think things are as simple as they seem (Joe and Nicky are, too, but Andy is the worst of them for it).

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Andy faces the Immediate After of Booker's betrayal and is forced to recognize that being as old as she is means that everyone else, even those she loves, are honestly just children sometimes...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor Andy.   
> She HAS to be the grown-up, simply because in relative terms she IS, but that never means admitting it is easy.  
> (Or that it ever gets any easier...)

**PART I :: ANDY**

In the Immediate After, Andy is both utterly numb and entirely electrified. She’s chilled through her old bones from the icy weight of deadened muscles, and yet lit from inside by a fire she’d forgotten how to feel as they escape Merrick Labs. That conflicted state of incomparable _feeling_ persists as they drive to a safehouse 20 minutes outside the London center-city, one with enough bathrooms to allow each member of their tragic little band to claim one for themselves (though, obviously, Joe and Nicky share one, regardless).

The privacy of that permeating sense of space permits them all to take their own time in separating themselves from the immediate horror of what they’d just gone through.

It allows them to clean up in their own ways and refocus on the fact that this isn’t really over, not yet. There are still two frickin’ _cosmic_ elephants in the room.

Booker is the first one, the most critical and the most painful.

Copley can wait until a point later in the After.

Andy takes longer than usual— than she _used_ to.

By the time she’s washed away the blood and viscera, by the time the shower has worked the worst soreness out of her aching muscles, and by the time she’s redressed her still-unhealed _wounds_ , Booker’s already gone. Nile, too.

They’ve crossed the little hamlet’s main street to a bar perched right on the coast. The Prospect of Whitby’s an old haunt of theirs, a regular watering hole they’ve indulged in for a few hundred years now (with careful periods of avoidance as generations change over). Booker’s ordered a round of beer for all of them, ensured that he’d selected each of their favorites and instructed the bartender to keep them coming all afternoon, before stepping away— as close to _out of sight, out of mind_ as he could possibly think the rest of them would tolerate.

He’s doing his best not to antagonize them any more than he already has— staying close enough to feel like they’ve got adequate supervision on him, and yet staying far enough away to keep from starting an actual brawl.

Meanwhile, Nile’s claimed a table in the back. It’s their usual spot— the one high-top that’s got the most obvious throw of tactical advantage in the place. Nile doesn’t wave when she spots Andy in the pub’s gloom, but she manages a stiff smile before she glances over her shoulder towards the wrap-around balcony to which Booker has retreated.

“He thinks you’re all gonna rip his limbs off or some shit,” Nile states, with that wonderfully refreshing, un-subtle archness of hers. “Seems pretty sure about it.”

“He’s been drawn and quartered before,” Andy replies, knowingly side-stepping Nile’s unspoken question. “He knows there’s a particular appeal to it as a punishment for us.”

Nile doesn’t take Andy’s shit and shoots a flat look her way that makes old warrior, _unbearably_ , want to flash a cheeky smile. It _hurts_ for Andy to feel such lightness in her chest when her heart is hung so heavy.

“We can’t just let this go, Nile,” Andy tells her, sympathetic.

The kid’s only known Booker a few days. She can’t possibly fathom the sting of this betrayal— can’t possibly grasp how it feels to have a rent torn through their reality when they’ve lived with such a small circle of Family being the only people in the world they trust.

It’s not her fault that she can’t understand, not by any means, but that doesn’t change how she truly _can **not**_ understand it.

Nile’s part of the Family, now, so she deserves to weigh in, but she’s just a baby…

Andy aches with pity for her— pity mixed with pride— and let’s her smile soften as the ghosts of 6000 years flicker through the shadows trapped behind her eyes.

Nile draws breath to say something more, but she doesn’t get a chance before Joe and Nicky walk in. They look better, Andy notes with the kind of relief that hits like a car crash, but they also look haunted in a way she’s never seen in them before.

Even after losing Quynh, even after nearly losing touch with Andy (as Andy nearly lost herself to the throes of a depressive psychosis that made her lash out), they’d never broached the sorry state of looking even _half_ this fucking devastated.

They have every reason to feel that way, Andy knows, but as the debate over what to do about Booker gets started— with Nile wanting nothing more than an apology from the man who’d betrayed them and Joe wanting to send large dismembered pieces of him to the moon— Andy feels more and more _exhausted_.

The ‘debate’ soon becomes a mostly circular argument between Joe and Nile.

Nicky shows his favor for one side’s point or the other’s in a pantomime of subtle touches, nods, and eyebrow raises. He doesn’t just blindly support Joe in this— in anything, really… (it’s endlessly comforting for Andy to be reminded of how healthy their relationship is and how Nicky has remained wholly his own person even after a thousand years as part of a set binary-unit)— but he doesn’t speak up with any of his own suggestions, points, or grievances.

Andy just stares at the ceiling.

She listens to their points, listens to both sides.

Gets more and more frustrated with what she’s hearing from them— frustrated with _them_ altogether. As they’ve been arguing, Andy has realized something very important about the little family she’s managed to gather around her.

“You’re all such fucking _children_ ,” she mutters— loud enough for them to hear, apparently, as they abruptly stop arguing and stare at her with a mix of confusion and insult.

Andy is not a mother to these people. At most, she’s an older sister, much older, maybe, but just a sister— not someone who should be in a position to dictate right from wrong for them.

But they are just all _so_ fucking _young_.

A thousand years is _nothing_.

Joe and Nicky are like teenagers to her, suddenly— teenagers, at best.

Booker is a toddler in a tantrum and Nile, poor sweet fucking _Nile_ , is an innocent, gurgling infant with that blindingly happy baby innocence shining from her frickin’ skin.

“Why’d he do it?” Andy mutters, gaze drifting out towards Booker’s back.

“He wanted it to end,” Nicky supplies, the reserved statement lilted in Nicky’s way of recognizing that a deeper question should be asked while admitting that he doesn’t know what that question should be.

“Bastard just wanted to get himself an out,” Joe spits, snarling into his beer as Nicky joins Andy in looking out the window at Booker’s back.

Andy sags in her seat.

She _knows_ it’s not that fucking simple.

And she knows _they_ know it, too.

Booker did this for himself, yes, but he also did it for _her_.

And she can’t imagine that he did what he did without knowing that it would be enough to affect Joe and Nicky, too. That he did it without realizing that _escape_ for him and Andy meant something horrible to Nicky and Joe…

But there’s another question, too, one that not even Nile has thought to ask yet.

Joe and Nile’s argument has picked back up while Andy’s gotten lost inside her head.

It stops abruptly as Andy kicks out at the stool across from her and curses as she hits the table with her fist. They stare at her in various stages of grief and high concern as she stands up and stalks out to the rail where Booker’s banished himself to standing vigil.

“Why _Copley_?”

Booker blinks and frowns at her with a clear pain in his eyes.

“Answer me, Book,” Andy snarls, eyes on the ocean. “ _Why_ fucking **_Copley_**?”

Booker _tries_ , shifting uneasily beside Andy as a few false starts claw up his throat. Andy lets him be, leaves him to struggle instead of barking at him to get on with it. She knows he’s trying, that he’s forcing himself to really answer instead of giving her an easy line meant mostly to provoke her righteous fury.

Knowing that he’s really trying does not stop Andy’s grip on the rail from going white-knuckled as he struggles to get his stupid shit together.

And then, _finally_ , Booker sighs and huffs the confession, “I believed him.”

Andy’s posture doesn’t change a fraction, but her eyes snap sideways to assess the loose, defeated curl of his posture.

“I _believed_ him, Andy,” Booker says again, telling her heavily, “I believed _in_ him.”

“And **_Merrick_**?”

Booker doesn’t flinch at Andy’s venom. He just looks ashamed.

“I never met him,” Booker admits. “Copley found him and said he was the right person for it all. I checked him out, but he wasn’t very social. And I guess he was just too young or too careful for any big scandals to have come to light. His company had done some legitimately good things, things that have directly saved thousands of lives. What I found seemed solid.”

The regret and pain and self-loathing are all pitiably evident in his little speech— it’s the most words he’s strung together with her since… _long_ before they stormed Copley’s home office.

“He was a _kid_ ,” Andy almost agreed. “200 years, and you’re still a fucking dumbass when it comes to trusting kids… but why _Copley_? Why trust _that_ jerkwad so damn much?”

Booker doesn’t answer right away— _can’t_ answer, more like.

“Because he believes in _you_ ,” Booker says, closing his eyes and hanging his head like a man at prayer— his voice cracked with the weight of fraying Faith.

It makes Andy turn to face him more fully, makes her have to fight hard to hold back from breaking her fist on his face at the painful thought that _anyone_ might still believe in the pathetic god damn _wreck_ of a useless, fragile fucking person she’s become.

She’d been an impotent immortal for a century, at least. And these last few decades…

Her efforts to save the world have all been nothing but a futile drop in the god damn ocean, and if she’s honest with herself, Andy can admit that all her efforts had probably _always_ been a senseless and pitiably ineffective pretense at helping people… all 6000 years of this shit.

It had all just been something shiny and simple to flatter her own damn ego.

She’d never really saved anyone.

She’d kept a couple people alive, sure, but she’d never really made things _better_.

Not in any way that mattered in the long run.

But Booker turns to her, looking more broken than she’s ever seen a man survive and says, “You do so much good, Andy… _We_ do so much good. And Copley sees it. This was supposed to be a gift, to all of us— to the whole god damn _world_. It was supposed to be one more bit of good, but one that could give us something back, for once.”

It hurts like nothing Andy’s ever felt to have that flung at her, to _feel_ a cherry-picked array of words she knows she’s said too often to ignore their clear impact on her team… It hurts too much to ignore the bite of having that impact thrown back in her pathetic, ancient face.

“Maybe we don’t fucking deserve it,” Andy spits, pushing off the rail and storming back inside the pub— running away to where she knows Booker won’t follow.

The others are looking at her expectantly as she throws herself back into her previously abandoned chair and chugs her beer as fast as she can down it— mortal liver be damned.

When the glass is empty, she slams it down and kicks herself back until her chair is tipping at a dangerous angle with her neck wholly exposed and pointed up to the ceiling.

“God damn fucker really thought this shit would _help_ ,” she reports— uncertain if the wail she hears behind the words is clear in her voice or simply screaming in her skull.

\- - - - -

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love Andy's complicated relationship with Booker, truly. There's a lot of depth there that ought to be explored.
> 
> NEXT TIME: Booker reflects on his own actions, mistakes, and shortcomings. Until someone makes him think about his potential.


	2. BOOKER

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Booker has a bit of time to reflect on his own shitty choices, and he gets a bit of perspective from the newest member of this messed up little Family.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes! Booker gets to chat with Nile!  
> It's not the scene from the movie where she goes out to get some air herself, that all comes later and I'm probably not even gonna include it in the actual meat of this story, maybe just a mention later on.
> 
> I think there are plenty of other things that Nile could say to help reorient everybody's view of what's going on here, so I focused on getting a few of those things out to air.
> 
> ^_~

** Part II :: Booker **

Booker is not a good person, not really.

He was a decent man before he died; a faithful, loving husband and a doting, embarrassingly indulgent father, a reliable and responsible (albeit criminal) businessman, and just altogether _decent_.

But he was never _good_.

Not like Andy.

Andy was a beacon for him, a light in the dark in the horror that he felt after Russia.

She knew what pain was. She knew grief with the same intimate ache of guilt and loneliness and _longing_ that drove him to drink, and yet she was still _so_ good.

So good, and so **_driven_**.

She made _him_ good— or, at least, she made him better, made sure that even if he wasn’t really a good person, he could damn well _do_ some good for others.

Nicky and Joe were good too; a different kind of good, but better than Booker could ever hope to be. They believed in Andy like the Grace of Fate she had to be, and they believed in _him_ with the very same kind of ferocious Faith.

Booker knew he didn’t deserve it, that he’d never deserved it.

And as he sank into his grief, into his loneliness and loss, and as the world burned down around them ever-more efficiently, Booker knew he deserved their Faith less and less.

As Andy began to indulge his benders more and more frequently, as she began to forget how much good she really did for the world, Booker knew he deserved their love even less.

Andy wanted to die.

She wanted all of it to just be _over_.

Booker did too, more than anything. He fed her worst impulses and couldn’t make himself stop even when he knew it was hurting her… when he knew it was ruining her.

Wallowing with her in the guilt and the loss and anguish… it hurt Booker far less than it did trying not to burst with the force of self-loathing he experienced while drowning his sorrows in alcohol around Joe and Nicky— hobbling their bliss with his how his demons ran unleashed.

They’ve always thought he was jealous.

They still do, Booker knows, they think he was so jealous of their happiness that he was willing to sell them out to Merrick because he hated how he could not have a share of their joy enough to let his selfish desire to end things overshadow any sort of more-than-Family bond they had… Than the unbreakable bond they were supposed to share implicitly after 200 years of fighting at each other’s backs and standing at each other’s sides.

But Booker had never been jealous, not really.

He’d been _happy_ for them, painfully happy. He _loved_ them. Still loves them.

He loves them with the fierce passion of a man granted salvation by their hand— because he _had_ been, in no uncertain terms.

Nicky and Joe are his brothers.

He wants them to be happy. He wants nothing more fervently, not even his own escape.

Booker knows the true depth of _love_ that finding a perfect compliment to your soul can create. And he knows the even deeper love of having experienced fatherhood.

He _knows_ what love is, what it could be, and he knows _they_ have a true one.

And he knows how much it would hurt when something makes it break.

Booker might not be a good person, but he could never wish the pain he felt at losing his family on anyone— especially not on Joe and Nicky. They are his _brothers_ and he loves them enough to want to help ensure that they would never have to face the horror of a life alone.

To ensure that _none_ of them did.

After escaping Merrick, after getting cleaned up and getting alcohol acquired, and after imposing his own self-banishment to the balcony, Booker thought he’d have nothing but his own regrets for company until his Fate and punishment had been decided.

And then he’d probably have nothing left at all.

But that wasn’t how it turned out.

Andy had come out to question him on Copley.

He’d tried to answer her questions, but he knew he didn’t do it justice.

Copley was… Copley _understood_. He knew the pain Booker was facing, understood the depths of his despair— not entirely, but enough to make it matter.

And more than that, he understood _Andy_ … He understood the good she did for the world, understood how to help her do even more good while simultaneously giving her the option of that final release which she’d been craving acutely for the last 100 years, at least.

Copley… Copley was _good_ , and he wanted to do good— wanted to help _them_ do good. It would be a gift given directly to the world; one Andy could _see_ impacting people’s lives.

And it would be a gift to _them_ , giving them the out they’d been both dreading and hoping for in a desperate, wavering ache of woefully undecided.

Booker had never given Andy anything but a reflection of her grief. He’d hoped this was a way to give her something more.

And give Joe and Nicky something, too.

All while giving the world something greater than the good any of them had dared to hope they could ever manage to affect.

Booker doesn’t convey it right. He knows that when Andy goes more and more rigid beside him as he speaks— knows it when she turns her back on him and rejoins the others.

But still, if he at least managed to tell her proper that it wasn’t _Merrick_ he’d sold them out too… Maybe Copley’s goodness wouldn’t be too overshadowed by his own mistake.

Because even now, even after everything and all the horror of what Merrick and Kozak had planned to wreck— of all the terror that they had wrought— Booker still thinks of Copley’s goodness and does not regret getting close to him.

He still does not regret letting _him_ get close to _them_.

Andy _needs_ Copley. She needs to see what he can see, or else she’ll turn into something too much like the drunken, useless mess that Booker has become.

Now, with her new mortality, she might just kill herself and finally be done with it.

It’s a thing that Booker finds himself… actively _dreading_.

She wants to die, he knows this, but… he doesn’t want her to take on that bounty of her newfound mortality just yet. He doesn’t want her to die without seeing what he always has, without seeing what he _hadn’t…_ what he hadn’t even guessed but Copley found.

Andy is _good_ and deserves to know it, to _feel_ it… and he believes Copley will help her.

If she does die soon, Booker wants her to at least die happy— to die feeling a little bit like she can revel in what her long life has accomplished.

“You really thought it would help.”

Nile’s statement startles Booker, but he’s too exhausted with the effort of just existing to jump. And it takes all of his cognition to parse her words and tone together. Her eyebrow’s raised like the statement was supposed to be framed as a question, and her lip is curled with a tinge of incredulous disgust like it’s really meant to be an accusation, but her voice and shoulders and eyes are soft… like she truly wants to try to understand his side of it.

“I was wrong,” Booker admits. “I was _blind_.”

“But you really thought it would help,” Nile repeats, not taking his bullshit.

“Yeah. I did,” Booker confesses, hanging his head until his neck screams at the strain.

Nile doesn’t say anything more. She doesn’t have to. She just stands there and shifts her weight to the opposite heel and crosses her arms with that eyebrow still cocked as she waits for the explanation they both know she’s due.

“Living like this, like Andy and I… it’s not okay,” Booker tells her. “I thought that if we could so some good _and_ find a way to let this end… I thought it would be worth it.”

Nile absorbs that, sits with it a minute to really let it process.

Book side-eyes her and counts her steady breaths.

“What about Joe and Nicky,” Nile asks, again in that way she has for giving a sort-of statement in an accusation but still with open room for questions to be answered.

“They weren’t supposed to be taken,” Booker promises. “No one was. The footage was supposed to be enough to get Merrick interested, and the samples he needed were supposed to come from me, alone. Copley didn’t think we’d even need to go to Merrick’s lab directly, we thought that I could just stay with Copley for a few weeks collecting whatever samples Merrick said he needed there and just letting Copley pass them on…”

Nile’s head cants sharply as she huffs an incredulous breath.

“I knew pieces of me would be taken, I knew they would be studied,” Booker admitted wholly. “But I didn’t… didn’t _recognize_ , I guess, how depraved science had gotten to be… I’d lived through witnessing Mengele’s atrocities and I thought… I thought it was a rarity, an aberration of the norm. I didn’t realize it was an infection he’d contracted that others could be infected by as well. I thought enlightened ethics would’ve bettered people smart enough to learn them in becoming doctors…”

“But what about _Joe_ and _Nicky_ ,” Nile presses after letting the weight Booker’s latest confession dissipate. “You said it was a gift for all of us. That’s what you told Andy, _all_ of us.”

“They wouldn’t have needed to use it _now_ ,” Booker told her, looking at her head on for the first time since leaving her alone at the table with the others’ waiting drinks.

Nile waits for more and Booker can’t find the words to give her.

“You’re so young, now, sweet girl,” Booker says, heart-breaking as it swells with the odd feeling of thinking her both a little sister and an adoptive daughter all at once. “ _So_ young.”

She bristles, but she doesn’t bite his head off at the comment she clearly _knows_ he doesn’t mean as an insult.

“You don’t know what it’s like to love as they do, you cannot even _fathom_ it,” he confides.

She’s still stiff with a pinch of indignation, but she is mature enough to recognize that four days of being an Immortal is not enough to have the proper grasp of scale for this. She cannot truly fathom what it means to have been so in love as Joe and Nicky, to have _been_ so in love for over 900 years. If pressed, Booker would confidently bet that she hasn’t even quite wrapped her head around what it means to _live_ 900 years— and he can already guess that she’s stunningly self-aware of her lack in that comprehension.

But the duration of Joe and Nicky’s love is not the only piece of it that makes it special.

They love with a passion that ascribes their whole being— they’ve found a compliment to their very souls. Most would envy them, would do _anything_ to feel even a fraction of it.

But not Booker.

Because he _had_ it.

And he lost it.

And he could never wish that pain on Joe and Nicky.

“It just stops,” Booker says suddenly in the quiet of a silence stretched too long. “We don’t know when and we don’t know why, but one day, it just stops.”

Nile shifts closer, listening.

“One of them will go _first_.”

There’s a soft gurgle that speaks of strangled breath in Nile’s throat.

Booker almost hates to go on, but he owes it to Nile to explain himself fully— owes it to all of them, honestly. He owes it to them to _try_.

“They died together the first time, but we can’t assume they’ll die together for the last time,” Booker rambles on. “We can’t know which one will stop first, or guess by how long one will outlive the other, but there’s far too much of a risk in it to pretend we’re safe in thinking that they’ll manage to truly leave this world together.”

Nile remains quiet as Booker looks at his hands, clasped together with white-knuckled grit that has already broken at least one finger.

“You’re so young, Nile. You’ve lost your father and your world ended, I’m sure,” he tells her, trying to show that he truly does sympathize— trying to show that what he’s about to say is not meant to diminish her loss, but to contextualize his own.

“But to lose a parent, even to lose one as a child,” Booker sighs, “Is to be a neighbor with a dead pet in the face of your loss in terms of you trying to understand the despair of at the heart of losing love like mine, like _theirs_. You simply cannot comprehend the weight of it.”

“You don’t think they could face it,” she accuses, steady this time in her statement, making it almost purely an indictment.

Booker hangs his head again. “I wouldn’t wish for them to ever need to…”

“But what if they aren’t like you, aren’t doomed like you think they are? What if they could grow from the loss,” Nile presses, thinking— Booker’s certain— of how her own mother had managed to carry on fighting. “They’d know that the other would want them to keep fighting the good fight. They’ve probably had words on it directly, made each other promise not to let a loss destroy the work of the man they love.”

She thinks he’s underestimated them, and perhaps he has.

Nile’s right that they aren’t like him, they aren’t weak or cowardly like him.

But still…

“Andromache was once ‘not like me’,” Booker tells her. “Even after Quynh… Eventually, the weight of it all will change them, like it changed her… and while I know they’re strong and fierce and fearless, I also know they don’t love like her, reserved and distant and calmly comfortable. They love like me; they love in a way that consumes them, they love like they believe it can truly save the god damned world.”

“Maybe it can,” Nile retorts, digging in. “Maybe it’s the only thing that can.”

She leaves him there with that statement hanging in the air above his weary shoulders.

It’s such a simple idea, and yet, it fits itself to all his jagged pieces like a balm with the pure grace of the Divine that he’s forgotten how to let himself believe in.

When Joe or Nicky go down in combat, the other is rendered an avenger— Joe becomes a monster of fiery ferocity; Nicky, an avenging angel with the cold calculation of unyielding stone.

But… but if one went down and _stayed_ down…

Maybe that focus wouldn’t stay destructive forever.

Maybe Nile has a point, maybe the love they have for each other could change things...

Maybe it _would_ be enough to make itself into another miracle… Maybe it would be the inspiration needed for them to truly change the world for the better.

Maybe love _shouldn’t_ be what ruins him, but what saves him instead.

His wife and children would be ashamed of who he has become.

How they were at the end… how they’d hated him, how they’d only seen the selfish coward who wouldn’t help them when they needed it most… They wasn’t how he wanted to remember them, and it wasn’t how he would’ve wanted to let himself be remembered.

Booker wasn’t ever a good person.

But he hadn’t always been _this_ bad.

Perhaps it was time to let go of the time between when he died in Russia and when he’d died again as the one he loved had. Perhaps it was time to live as if he’d truly died the first time.

And been reborn entirely new.

He still had a Family after all, and he loved him every bit as fiercely as if they had truly been born his brothers and sister— he loved them far more fiercely than any of his fellows from the war where he’d felt the fraternal camaraderie of being ‘brothers at arms’…

Maybe it was time to be the man he _could_ have been if his wife had ever known what could happen to him in despair and had then _asked_ him directly to be better than to let himself succumb to such a fall.

Perhaps in another version of reality she had.

Perhaps even in _this_ version, he could start living up to what she would've hoped for if things had turned out differently...

If she had ever asked him to live on and be _better_ … maybe he would have found within him a bit more strength to do so.

Maybe he still could...

\- - - - -

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nile's Mama taught her baby right.
> 
> And Booker's just a little lost, is all, she'd think. Hurt people hurt people, after all, and layin' blame ain't done no good for nobody in ANY version of this kind of sorry story...
> 
> ^_~
> 
> NEXT TIME: Nicky's PoV as he gets a chapter to process this nonsense!
> 
> [Also, I want to acknowledge a comment from a reader who dislikes the idea of how I phrased the 'babysitter housefire' thing, because it's a legitimate viewpoint to have and people have every right to be concerned: 
> 
> I want to respect Joe and Nicky and the trauma they've faced (and what Andy and Nile have faced, too, for that matter). I don't want to be apologist for Booker's horrible choices. I've studied the psychology of domestic violence enough to know that it's a problematic trend. But I've also studied the psychology of suicide, particularly teen suicide, enough to know that not acknowledging the legitimate age / experience differences between these people can be equally problematic.
> 
> Therefore, I DO want to acknowledge that Hurt people hurt people.
> 
> Booker has been DROWNING. Everyone else in this Family (barring Nile, in some respects) is old enough to have known better than to let the suicidal teenager take a toaster into the bathtub, even if they got burned in the resulting housefire...
> 
> And also, the way Booker seems to sort-of put blame on his dead wife for not seeing the possibility and asking him to be better is unhealthy. Yes. It's a weird sort of victim blaming. But he doesn't wholly mean it that way, and it's a step forward for him from a WAY worse state of thinking. If it alarms you, try to see this bit as Booker deciding to remember his wife as if she HAD done the things he seems to be blaming her for not doing. He's not good at getting his thought process over here, but in his mind he's now chosen to step forward. It is not perfect and his phrasing NEEDS to be addressed, but he's in such a bad state right now, that nothing he could conclude would be entirely unproblematic. This is ONE step in a long road towards better that allows for the plethora of other issues to be temporarily suspended for the sake not aborting the momentum of progress, even limited as it is...
> 
> I hope that sincerity waylays some concerns!]
> 
> <3 <3 <3


	3. NICKY

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nicky gets a beat to process. And he takes the chance to ask his little brother some questions of his own, to confront a few of what fears and hurt they both still share.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nicky serves a unique role within the Team, and his place inside their little messed up Family is fascinating to me.
> 
> (He's also got one of the healthiest mindsets of the lot, so there's also that).
> 
> ^_~

** Part III :: Nicky **

Nicky holds the middle ground.

He provides a more ranged variety of support.

It is the role he’s always had, the one he’s always volunteered for.

He can be cold and objective when he needs to be, no matter what’s at stake.

But _this_ is a test like no other that he’s faced.

He hurts for his little Family, for _every_ member of it.

Booker is his _brother_ and yet he hurt the rest of them— hurt them acutely and intentionally in a way that he had to know would sting like nothing else ever could.

And yet… _Book_ is hurting so much as that and more, so lost in the despair as he was to have been unable to see things with any hint of clarity.

Andy says he truly thought it would help.

Nile says he never thought the others would be grabbed, that he’s worried for Nicolò and Yusuf’s future and the potential pain they’d face when the Almighty that brought them together eventually tore them apart.

Joe is still too hurt and heartbroken to say anything he truly means.

And Nicky doesn’t know where that leaves _him_. Where that leaves _them_ , both the two of them and the four of them… and even the _five_ of them, to be honest.

Eventually, the argument lapses into silence, weighted and thick with too much grief to sort through the varied points of origin.

Nicky stands.

Joe nearly falls out of his seat as he stands to step in front of him— bodily barring his way toward Booker with a kind of heart-broke desperation that makes Nicky nearly crumble.

And yet…

Nicolò di Genova does not back down.

Such is not a trait within his nature. His gaze is filled with sympathy as it meets Joe’s own despairing and betrayed one, but he does not back down.

Yusuf is Nicolò’s heart and soul, his whole reason for being better than he was— for being a person who could overcome what Booker had not— but Yusuf is not _all_ he is. Yusuf is not the piece of him that defines the _limits_ of what he can be, but the _start_ of his potential. He and Yusuf are still discrete entities, even after eons, they are their own people bound by Fate and love and history, but not merged in any way that makes their love banal or any less miraculous.

They are not two halves of one whole.

They are two hearts that beat in sync, two souls that sing in harmony, two minds that see and feel and _know_ enough to **_teach_** _each other_ — to show each other new things and new perspectives even after centuries of being in this world together.

Joe cannot see what Nicky does, and Nicky won’t let his place at Joe’s side determine his ultimate loyalties without his own past-due evaluation.

Nicky stares Joe down, implacable, until his lover deflates enough to sag back into his seat— heaving Nicky’s pseudo-betrayal off with a huff as he keeps his back firmly to the window.

Nicky rests his elbows on the rail beside Booker and waits in silence until Book looks over at him— having heard the door open and braced himself for something louder and more final than a quiet conversation with Nicky.

Nicky doesn’t deliver final verdicts.

He’ll explain them if the initial delivery doesn’t get the message properly across, but he does not report the sentence first of all.

If Nicky has a verdict for you, you’ll find it out when he’s put a bullet in your brain.

Nicky also doesn’t _ask_. He demands the answers he seeks when he knows who has them.

But here, he doesn’t know any questions that he actually wants to have answered, yet.

He just wants Booker to explain, wants in turn to explain himself to Booker… because they are a Family, and none of them can possibly exist in true isolation.

Book is the one who made the bad decision, but the rest of them are not absolved of all responsibility, as they were all party to creating what bleak circumstances Booker faced, to creating what dismay he believed was enough to push him into making his horrid choice.

Nicky waits for Booker to speak his Truth, waits with his eyes on the restless sea.

“I am so sorry, Nicky,” Booker says, looking at him with imploring eyes.

“I cannot give you absolution, Basti,” Nicky tells him, gaze still on the ocean. “And I cannot yet bring my own self to forgive you, no matter what reasons you bring to bear.”

Booker falls silent, defeated like a kicked dog.

“We failed you too, however, in letting you face your despair as we did,” Nicky tells him after a long moment of solemn contemplation. “We failed you in how we brought you into our Family, failed you every bit as much as we’ve ever failed the civilians that we cannot save. But we also did not pull the trigger on this, as you did, and I am finding it difficult to reconcile such divisive and complementary guilts.”

They always think of Joe as the one to give the pretty speeches, and his Yusuf certainly deserves the epithet, but Nicky appreciates those speeches not because he is incapable of wielding words himself, but because he is more economical with how he states his feelings.

He pulls no punches, leaves no ambiguity.

When he is confused, he says so, and when he’s not he states it clear.

“Yusuf is my heart, my soul, my mind’s only true peace,” Nicky tells his little brother with the cool detachment of age and sympathy. “We have let you bear 200 years of misery and let ourselves forget, nigh even then, how truly young you still are. Nile helped me to remember it, her saying how you had called _her_ so young. A ‘neighbor with a dead pet’, she said. It goes for comfort, too, Basti— it goes for _certainty_ and calm.”

“You’ve never been a father, Nicky, even as old as you are,” Booker pleads, half frantic to have his reasons reconciled. He wants to be clear, to give himself over unto the others’ understanding, to be heard and truly _listened_ to… He is desperate for it, _desperate_ to be understood, in a way Nicky has, unforgivably, realized he hadn’t the patience to fully see before.

“And you’ve never had a love grow warm inside you over eons, to feel the Faith in Truth it brings,” Nicky replied, not ceding any ground.

Booker bites his tongue— cutting off what was sure to be a sour retort, a snap of love turned too bitter to bear. Of trust that feels betrayed as what he feels should be a valid point is just summarily dismissed.

“You loved them very much, your wife and children,” Nicky states, confident that his words will not be taken as any kind of understatement. “You loved them until it consumed you like a fire, as you believe Yusuf and I love. But you are still so young in how you see things if you think the love either of us has could ever die with the ones to whom we give it.”

Booker blinks, equal parts surprised and hurt, Nicky thinks.

“Your family hurt you at their end,” Nicky goes on, “They levied accusations, and you have let yourself descend to meet them. This man beside me is not the one they loved while living, and you do them disservice by believing you could become the monster that they made you. Their love is pure and powerful, tainted only by mortal concerns that I have Faith their immortal souls regret. But if they were first to meet you now, they would not be able to abide it.”

Booker is retreating, sliding away from Nicky, inch by inch, along the rail.

“If Yusuf dies, I will despair,” Nicky confesses. “I will ravage lands and wreck vengeance on all villains I can find, killing countless in his name. But the grief will ebb in the face of what good I can still do in his name, what good I can lay claim to having had his heart inspire. It will hurt, and I cannot bear to think of what horrors I may commit at the apex of it, but I cannot believe I will forget the goodness of my Yusuf, the good-work he had, in all his life, strove to create. I cannot believe I will dishonor my own love for him by failing to carry his work on.”

“ ‘ _This is what we do_ ’, you say,” Book says with a keening sort of hollow voice. “It’s a mantra, not true belief. You _want_ to believe it, but you have no proof and you **_want_** it.”

“You say Copley has proof, say you’ve seen it, yet you do not believe any more than I that what we do day to day affects things,” Nicky counters. “It _is_ a mantra, _and_ it is belief. The belief is more robust on some days than on others, but there is nothing that will break my Faith. I am a thousand years old, Basti, and the world has been awful for every single one of the years I’ve lived. But there are people who have lived longer lives because of my presence in the horrors of their worst moments, and I have found a way to let that be enough.”

Booker doesn’t speak— can’t speak.

Nicky turns his gaze away, looking back to the violent roll of the ocean waves.

“Tell me _why_ , Booker,” he demands, voice soft and smooth and inescapable. “Tell me what it is you want. Tell me what will help you, or will help me _see_ you.”

Booker half-collapses.

“I don’t have excuses left,” he manages eventually. “I don’t have good reasons, or bad ones…. Or anything. I don’t have _anything_. Just the grief and the regret.”

“You have us,” Nicky promises simply. “I cannot forgive you yet, but I can promise you that my inability is due only to the freshness of this hurt. You will be forgiven and welcomed back into the Family with no further stipulations, once you have paid your penance.”

“I don’t deserve that. I don’t deserve _you_.” Booker knows Nicky cannot disagree.

But he feels his test of faith has been suddenly decided.

“Love does not care what you deserve,” Nicky says pushing off the rail to return to where the others wait inside for his assessment.

\- - - - -

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh Sweet Nicky...
> 
> I hope you guys are having a great (and SAFE) Holiday season in this crazy messed up nonsense we're calling 2020! <3
> 
> NEXT TIME: It's Joe's turn for a PoV, attempt-to-process play-by-play!
> 
> <3 <3 <3


	4. JOE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joe cannot begin to fathom how Booker did this, and even worse, he cannot comprehend why so much of his Family seems to be starting to understand it...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor Joe. Poor everyone, but especially poor Joe. He just... FEELS things so much more intensely than the others... And he cannot forgive or understand Booker's reasoning.

**Part IV :: Joe**

Booker _betrayed_ him.

His _brother_ betrayed them.

Joe’s own blood-oath _brother_ of Fate betrayed them all like none of it mattered and he put Joe’s own sweet soul under the knife of callous torment, because he was too jealous and too weak and too short-sighted to know better.

Because he was too _young_ to know better.

Nicky and Andy and Nile have all somehow resolved that they can forgive him— either they have already or know that they will, soon enough, come to it in time.

Joe cannot begin to fathom it.

Andy says Booker was a teenager trying to commit suicide and accidentally burning down the house, that he failed to see any of the realest consequences in his actions.

Nile says he’d simply found something that helped him see a sort of goodness he could finally _believe in_ ; says he met Copley, found a kindred spirit who believed in _him_ , and wanted to do something good that actually gave him back some tangible reward— selfish bastard.

Even Nicky, Joe's own dear Nicolò, has fallen for the forger’s petty peddling.

_Nicky_ believes him, believes that his reasons for nearly destroying everything good about Yusuf’s whole world were _good enough_ reasons to make him truly think it could be worth it.

Joe will not forgive him, not ever. He has resolved to it, resolved to carry the hatred that the others cannot bear to shoulder. He will carry all of it for them, hate Booker for them. So, they can let the weight that comes from hating him so thoroughly rest outside their ardent souls.

For a moment, Joe isn’t sure he will survive it.

Hating Booker is like hating his own foot, like hating the run of charcoal his own fingers managed to get into his watering eye.

Booker is _Family_ , Booker is his _brother._

For a moment, Joe is very sure he will _not_ survive this.

But then he looks at Nicky, his unfailingly kind and sweet beloved, his **_so_** _-forgiving_ Nicolò, and hears the echoes of his dying screams on that bitch Kozak’s table… He sees shadows of Nicky’s brains being stepped in by the boot of that degenerate Keane after he’d shot Nicky in the head… And Joe feels such a blindingly hot fury at the prospect of letting anyone connected to that horror dare to _live_ that he wants to find a way to kill Booker dead himself.

And yet, he’d hate to give the bastard what he wants.

Yusuf cannot talk to Booker, cannot stomach even _thinking_ about it.

When he pushes up from the table, he doesn’t face the window when he storms away— instead, he goes outside the other way, tromping down onto the old cobbles that he’d been around to watch be laid. Most of them have been replaced since then.

Nicky appears beside him, eventually, as he finds one of the very few original stones left.

The love of Yusuf’s life doesn’t say anything, doesn’t touch him, doesn’t do anything but _exist_ and be _there_ and Joe already feels better for it— feels slightly more himself.

Which breeds a guilt like no other.

Nicky is _here_ , but if were up to Booker, he _wouldn’t_ be.

Nicky being here shouldn’t be what lets Joe not hate Booker for almost taking him away.

“That traitor’s head should be cut off,” Joe announces with a violent hand gesture that probably hasn’t been genuinely rude in a few hundred years. “Repeatedly, until it sticks.”

Nicky gives a slow blink that Joe finds inconsolably unreadable.

“I would’ve cut my own arm off, even if I knew it would not grow back, before I let a stranger say a bad word of him,” Joe wails. “I would have _died_ , for good, to save him. I would have let myself leave _you_.”

Nicky does not say anything, he simply lets his sad eyes overflow with sympathy and understanding for how much just existing in this nightmare hurts.

“I _hate_ him, Nicky,” Joe says, at a loss for words, a true rarity for him in his thousand years of life. “I hate him, and I hate that I hate him, but I hate the idea of not hating him even more than I hate this feeling.”

“You cannot hate him anymore than he hates himself,” Nicky states, and Joe feels like he’s been wrapped in a hug he didn’t know he needed, though Nicky’s hands are still in his pockets and he’s standing nigh on three full meters yet away.

Nicky will forgive him for hating Booker, Joe knows that.

He might not approve of the vitriol Joe bears their brother, certainly disapproves of the claim that any of that hatred is on Nicky's behalf, but Nicky will forgive him for it.

It makes Joe hate Booker even more.

“ _Your_ God is the vengeful one,” Joe accuses suddenly, hating himself even as the words fall from his lips. “Allah would never seek to add more suffering to this world, but your god should have filled you with His righteous fury.”

It was supposed to be an accusation, but Joe regrets it too much before he even speaks it to have managed to make the words come out with any barbs.

Instead it’s made a few tears squeeze out from the corners of his eyes.

“There is no righteousness in fury,” Nicky says, pulling the last dregs of wind from Joe’s sails with the simple and beautiful eloquence of the Divine.

Joe trembles, hands in fists, wishing he had Booker’s nose to break instead of just his own poor heart as Nicolò meets his gaze, unwavering.

“You and I have grown passed the banalities of organized religion, poorly built by broken men,” Nicky states eventually. “We fall back on scripture only when the doubt is fierce enough to quench the fire of our souls, but our souls are not like charcoal. We are not done burning once our fire has been made damp. The spark will reignite again, eventually, and we have our sure salvation in that we are blessed with time enough secured to wait until it does.”

“ _He killed Andy_ ,” Yusuf wails, the only ember of his pain left burning.

At this, Nicky hardens— leans a fraction of an inch away.

To Yusuf, that fraction feels like miles and eternities.

“No, Yusuf. He did _not_ ,” Nicky states surely. “He shot her, fully expecting that she’d heal. Her time is her time, and it is not Booker’s Fate to bring her to it. Already, even having shot her, he did not stumble upon her time inadvertently. Even unaware that she could not heal, he did not introduce her to her Ferryman. All he tried to do was slow her down a little— In hope that he could somehow convince her if he explained.”

It’s a revelation to Joe, a reframing of the situation that actually _matters_.

It’s the difference between watching a sunrise through a window and seeing the full glory of it on the endless horizon of a jewel-toned desert.

Booker _declared_ that he’d killed Andy.

He’d directly incited the wrath he believed he was due.

And Joe had given him his full fury for it.

Shame floods him, completely enough to snuff out the fury and turn it purely to despair.

“He still was willing to make me sacrifice you for his own pathetic reasons,” Joe says, feeling hollowed out and raw in a way he cannot fathom how to deal with. Just as he cannot fathom how the others have a depth of soul that can forgive such a heinous betrayal as Booker’s.

“I cannot forgive him,” Joe announces, “I cannot believe I _will_ forgive him. Ever.”

“I’ll believe it for you,” Nicky supplies. “I’ll remind you who you are right now is not always all that you can be, and I will love every version of you I meet between this version and the one I know will come eventually— the one who will forgive his brother.”

Yusuf crumbles. His Nicolò still does not embrace him, but his soft smile props Joe up as steady as any arm might do.

“I _hate_ him, Nicky,” Yusuf says, shuddering as he exorcises the vile sentiment from his soul. His voice is hardly strong enough to call a whimper. “I hate him more than I have ever hated anything, than I have ever hated _you_. I cannot breathe, I hate him so.”

“This will not kill you,” Nicky declares, “Your death is mine.”

It’s an old promise between them, sometimes an oath of self-righteous possession, from they each believed it was their Fate to kill the other, and sometimes it's a promise of a deep despair at the potential of the Veil dividing them.

Today, it makes Joe feel invincible— something he’d forgotten that he was.

He gives Nicky his own weak smile.

“My death is yours,” he says. Yusuf will never leave Nicky unless Nicky lets him go, Allah could not mean for them to be apart unless Nicky could truly bear it. And vice versa.

“As yours is mine,” Joe finishes.

Nicky offers Joe his hand and, together, they go back inside.

\- - - - -

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor, poor Joe. HIs hurt just folds in on itself over and over until he can't find the edge of it. But luckily, he's got Nicky to help him through the torment of the aftermath.
> 
> NEXT TIME: It's NILE's turn to take a whirl at getting a slice of understanding at what happened in this mess.
> 
> HAPPY CHRISTMAS, EVERYONE!!! <3


	5. NILE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nile gets a chance to DO something for her new Family, something truly important.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm skipping over the part where Nile goes out to talk to Booker, since we actually see that happen in the movie, but this little bit is Nile helping in the transition to being at Copley's place. I think Nile was a big part of the "hear him out" lobbying that actually got these idiots to hold still for ten seconds and truly SEE what was really there.
> 
> <3

**Part V :: NILE**

Bringing them to Copley feels like leading Dizzy to her first confession— after the bombing that had nearly taken Jay from them.

It was a revelatory experience, one that truly was _religious_.

It was righteous and important, and now, it makes the first bit of fucking sense out of why she is even _there_ when these god damn world-shaping immortals couldn’t possibly need little old South Side Nile Freeman for anything significant.

Nicky stares and stares like a man standing at Heaven’s Gates.

He is standing in the presence of a holiness he’d come to doubt over centuries of having his Faith tested— more even, Nile could see that he was realizing exactly how his doubts hadn’t been half as deeply rooted as he’d feared.

His tears don’t fall and he stands silently, and his shoulders don’t quite shake, but there’s a clear shudder now and then as an age-old tension in him dissipates.

Watching Nicky almost makes Nile cry.

But watching him hurts less than watching the others.

Joe is praying under his breath, to Allah and the very beauty of creation. His fingers run over the strings connecting their small good deeds to the outpouring of good aftermaths that came in the slight delay of consequences.

He looks at Copley like he can almost understand his brother’s deep betrayal.

Copley believes in them, in a way _they_ haven’t for a damn long while.

Copley looks at them like they could make the sun rise on a whim and for someone like Joe to feel the resonance of that Faith… for _him_ to realize it… He knows the depth of his own doubts would be dwarfed by Booker’s, so for him to see the grandeur in this clearly shows him how easily Booker could connect with Copley over the pain of having lost a family and been unable to see a path beyond the hurt…

But then Andy… Andy can’t keep herself at standing, old girl just falls into a chair like gravity ain’t workin’ right for her.

“Maybe this is the why, Andy,” Nile pushes, talking with the certainty she’s found in this new sense of purpose flooding through her voice.

Andy just nods, too lost in all the memories.

The 150 years or so that Copley has compiled don’t even scratch the surface of the ocean Andy’s sinking through. He looks like he wants to ask for her autograph, but a look from Nile has him nodding with a promise that shows he’s aware she needs time to process.

And Copley… Nile _gets_ why Booker liked him, he’s a good guy at base who wants to do good. He’s just been a dumbass in how he’s been going about it.

But grief can do that to a person.

Not everyone has the strength of Nile’s Mama.

And Copley paired with Booker… bad idea to worse, with extra alcohol. There’s a damn good _reason_ ordnance are not kept near the barracks, after all.

For his part, Copley is a god damn champ.

Doesn’t ask where Booker is, doesn’t blink when a trio of immortals starts to cry and pray and _fall_. He just states his case for how he values them, for how their work is critical to keeping even the worst of worlds progressing on a more even kind of keel.

Eventually, Andy looks to Nicky.

He dips his head— pleading, not acceptance.

Andy is the one who looks away.

She flings herself up to her feet and actually gets close enough to read the articles that Copley has connected.

There’s a straightness in her shoulders that Nile never realized had been missing, a straightness in her _spine_.

Nicky looks to Joe— who will not look at him.

But Nile remembers how her parents used to fight. How Mama had this _look_ that was just plain quelling in a certain slant, and yet could burn through any pretense of ignorance in another. Joe knows his Nicky’s looking, and if Joe knows Nicky’s looking, the battle is already lost for him in pretending he could keep his eyes away.

When Joe turns, Nicky tips his head.

Like with Andy, there’s a whole conversation in that stare.

But so much deeper between lovers.

Already, Nile can read so much in this trio’s every tiny gesture.

After another hundred or two hundred or a thousand years… she’ll be just as close to them as they are now among each other.

The thought is only sorta terrifying.

Mostly it’s exhilarating.

She can do so much _good_ with them, more than she ever could with the Marines.

She can see Joe cave before Joe can feel it— though _her_ recognition comes well after Nicky’s ever-stoic and serene expression twitches towards a smile.

“Ten days,” Joe says after spouting off a string of curse words in an older form of Arabic than Nile can interpret. “I don’t want to see that fucking traitor’s face for at least ten god damn frickin’ days. And I want a year off before we even _think_ about the possibility of working with that asshole again. You are all fucking saps and bullies and I hate you all. Especially _you_ , Nile, because you are the most annoying little sister in the whole wide world and my heart overflows with a joy so hot it hurts every time I think of how I’m grateful that you are now my Family.”  
“I hate how well that sappy shit works for you, jackass,” Nile tells him as she hugs him.

“It never gets any less annoying,” Andy contributes. “The fact that he pulls it off so well just makes him _that_ much more punchable each time it happens.”

Then Andromache the Scythian rounds on Copley.

To his credit, the little ex-spook doesn’t piss himself. He doesn’t even wince.

If Andy kills him now, he’ll die believing that he served his purpose here on earth.

Nile knows Andy is neither cruel enough for that, nor kind enough.

She _forgot_ , briefly, how precious all life is to her— but now she remembers that resolve.

Her ultimatum to Copley is accepted with true grace. Copley says he would be honored, and Nile honestly believes him.

He’ll have to be watched, and he’ll be kept far closer than a trusted confidant could roam, but Nile thinks he’ll earn their confidence eventually.

“Andy,” Nile calls as they head down to the car from Copley’s. “I’m sorry about what I said about you. You’re not a monster. You never were, you just... I was scared… _of_ you and of _becoming_ you because I thought I might forget the me I left behind…”

Andy turns away before Nile first whole sentence is out.

Nile honestly doesn’t quite know what compelled her to keep talking.

“You don’t apologize to Family, kid,” Joe tells her, clapping a hand on her shoulder.

“But we will listen to any words your heart must speak,” Nicky adds from her other side, nudging lightly into her shoulder. “Andromache just… gets embarrassed easily.”

“I heard that, you pretentious holy fucker,” Andy gripes loudly, starting the engine with the threat to drive away without them. The others scramble to catch up, and as Nile slides into the backseat, and falls asleep almost immediately, she notes that what she’s feeling is all the awful stress of… _everything_ since her last day in Afghanistan sliding softly away.

She died in Afghanistan, and that will haunt her (and her birth-family) forever, but she is not, and will never be, alone.

It’s something she did not realize she was so uncertain of until finding real connection to this collection of ancient, damaged idiots and really _felt_ them pulling close as her new Family.

Nile falls asleep feeling safe and warm and more hopeful than she has in decades.

\- - - - -

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short but sweet. And necessary.
> 
> Next time there's a bonus little chapter with Copley, and it should be going up a bit early as a sort of New Year's present to you all and one last positivity-focused '/Fuck You/' to 2020... 
> 
> ^_~


	6. COPLEY

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A Final Wrap-Up from Copley's PoV, looking towards the future, both far and near...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short little wrap up, because I felt 2020 needed a conclusive ending and I could crank one out to this quickly enough to manage. XD

**Part VI :: COPLEY**

Copley will do everything in his power to deserve the faith that Andromache has given him, despite his utter failings as a decent human being towards her.

Which is why, before his program finishes deleting the last of the Merrick footage, he tracks through all the other electronic trails they’d left behind in recent years. Only one catches his eye as an anomaly… he deletes the trail to it, but he sends the footage to Nicky.

He doesn’t know what else to do with it, and he thinks Nicky would be the best to hand this off to… because it probably shouldn’t be ignored or forgotten.

\-- _Who?_ \--

The text comes mere seconds after the file sends and registers as having been open and played.

Copley had done his homework properly. He gives Nicky the girl’s complete profile.

Celeste Berger.

  1. High School Diploma— 58th percentile.



Some college applications, two with acceptances, none followed up on.

Cashier at a particular French pharmacy.

Estranged from her parents and barely getting by, but loved by those who know her.

She had probably saved Andy’s life.

She had _certainly_ been the spark that started what saved Andy’s soul.

Copley watches the live-feed from the pharmacy 12 hours later as the girl is getting ready to close up for the night and Nicky steps through her door.

She hardly looks up until he approaches her directly.

“Miss Berger? My name is Nicky, and you saved my sister a few nights ago,” he introduced in that straightforward way of his that could put anyone at ease.

Celeste doesn’t speak up to acknowledge his implicit praise— balks at the idea of accepting his unspoken, but achingly heartfelt thanks.

“She would not have died from it,” Celeste says at length— and only after Nicky tries to buy a 2 euro granola bar with a five hundred euro note while telling her to keep the change.

“Andy would not die from much,” Nicky cedes. “You did not save her life, but you saved _her_ when she’d forgotten what it felt like to _have_ a life worth living. For that, I am grateful.”

“You are grateful for breathing,” Celeste says. “What does it matter that I helped her, if you have means to help with such frivolous things, you have means to help someone who needs it far more. I cannot take your money for doing something that all people should.”

“Not all people would,” Nicky tells her. “I have met more than my share of those who won’t, of those who would actively hurt instead of help. My sister and my Family, we help. Andy forgot that little acts have big ripples. You helped save her, and that helped save us, and _that_ has helped countless millions in humanity’s future.”

Celeste balks again, but this time she pockets Nicky’s change.

“You are under our protection now,” Nicky says with a glance at the camera Copley is viewing this event through. Looking away, he goes on, “You are under _my_ protection. If you do not like it, you will not see me, but you will still be under my care. If you truly care about getting us to help people who are not you, _find them_. If you need anything, or if you know anyone who is in trouble— _real_ trouble— call this number. We will see that help is given.”

Celeste takes the card with only mild trepidation, soothed by Nicky’s patent earnestness and the deceptive softness of his imploringly congenial smile.

Andy would bitch about him doing this— would’ve bitched at Celeste about having a seething hatred of bearing unpaid debts. Joe would’ve scared the poor girl off entirely with his need to wax poetic of the good she’s inspired, and when he discovers that Nicky had confronted her without him, he’ll probably join forces with Andy to complain about it.

Booker, as far as Copley knows, is still out of the picture— still drinking himself to repeated deaths alone in Paris (though only for a few more days if his count is correct).

Nile will probably come check in on Celeste once or twice over the next few years, as Andy certainly will, as well (possibly more frequently; possibly quite a bit more, even).

And they’ll all expect Copley to keep very close tabs (which he’ll do without question).

He’ll provide the support to Celeste Berger that they may be too high-profile to manage. This woman is an example of the sort of person that the world truly needs, the sort that deserves a little gifted kindness of her own to match what she puts out into the world.

With the Old Guard, Copley will spend the rest of his life doing more effective work to help improve the world than he could have ever dreamed of managing with the CIA. And with Celeste as a contact, along with other contacts like her that Copley intends to make, he will ensure that there is someone to replace him when he grows too old to be helpful to their cause.

But for now, Copley deletes the footage of the pharmacy.

And his program, soon after, fragments the very last of Merrick’s data.

James Copley closes his laptop and shuts down the various desktops he also had running. He exchanges his tablet for the photograph of his wife—the last one she’d taken for him before she’d gone into the hospital. She’s not entirely healthy in it, but she is entirely happy.

And she’s so hopeful of what the world could be.

For the first time since she died, since she first got sick, Copley feels at peace.

For the first time in far too long a while, he thinks she might be proud of him.

\- - - - -

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, y'all. 2020 is almost OVER. Today is the very last day of this raging dumpster fire of a year and hope is on the horizon!
> 
> I know this last chapter didn't go quite the way people expected, but I just wanted to put 2020 to bed without any unfinished story-bits being carried over with this past year's angst attached. 
> 
> THANK YOU ALL for reading and HAPPY 2021!!!
> 
> I'm not done with this fandom yet, FYI. I'll be back in a week or two with the first chapter of another fic, a much longer and more involved one! <3

**Author's Note:**

> I absolutely ADORE all these idiots and I will DEFINITELY be writing more for this fandom!
> 
> Your responses are serious 80% of what's been keeping me sane during the horrible calamity of this Pandemic, so THANK YOU ALL for everything you do! Your views, Kudos, and comments are AMAZING.
> 
> Also, if you like what I do and wanna keep closer tabs on all of it, or you just wanna scream with me about idiots in multiple fandoms, check out my Tumblr! ( [ astyle-alex.tumblr.com ](https://astyle-alex.tumblr.com/) )
> 
> <3 <3 <3


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